I was going to list some ideas for evil societies for this week, but the randomization software needs more tweaking. So here are some more random magic spells and items.

Lamp of Grim Digging: Enables the owner to find and dig up buried bodies quickly and easily.

Yungamel’s Levitating Unicorn: Causes a unicorn to rise into the air for maximum of 50 feet. The unicorn can be willing or unwilling.

Pipe of Lengthy Wonderment: A lightweight metal pipe of 1” diameter that can expand up to 20 feet and contract back again. May also be cast on the owner’s genitals to impress the ladies.

Saddle of Kicking Turmoil: When placed on any equine, it causes the animal to go into a frenzy of kicking so nothing can sit on its back.

Incense of Sorrow: When burned, it causes all smellers to lament loudly.

Dice of the Shape-Changer: A very rare magic item that can range from five to twenty sides. Each side is inscribed with symbols, glyphs, numbers, or icons. When rolled, it enables the user to turn into the creature or thing depicted on that side.

Sandals of Persistence: Enables the wearer to walk all day and all night as long as they have a clear goal.

Whistle of Unseen Grease: This item is covered with an invisible greasy coating that makes it impossible to hold or blow.

The Automaton of Singing Torture: This magical item sings so badly anyone in its presence will immediately capitulate to the owner’s demands.

Olnimea’s Squamous Bracelet: A bracelet in the shape of a coiled snake that becomes a real snake on the owner’s command.

Scissors of Hideous Brass: Doesn’t do anything but look ugly.

The Sarcophagus of Meddlesome Bones: When a body is buried in this, in time it becomes a skeleton that doesn’t know it is dead and keeps trying to return to the land of the living.

The Seattle Public Library is hosting a book bingo, where you read some books in the categories printed on the card, and then turn it in in September with your comments. The contest runs between May 17 and September 5. Drop off the finished card at an SPL branch and you will be entered to win a gift card to an independent bookstore.

The viscous cream with the nutrients came once a day through the tube. But the limited air she had was running out. Encased in metal bondage, she looked around desperately for a rescuer, knowing full well none would find her in this underground space.

Cinder

by Marisa Meyer Macmillan, 2012

[Challenge # 4:A book you started last year and
haven’t yet finished.]

I started Cinder last year. It was one of the first ebooks I ever bought because I could not seem to finish the hardback I had borrowed from the library. Then, after working on it intermittently, I could not finished the ebook. Finally I slotted it into the Authors’ Water Cooler challenge, and after some starts and stops, I did finish it. Now know why I had such a problem finishing it. It was that dull.

Now, I know this book has its defenders, and many of them have valid points; I’ve also got three decades on the intended audience, which was 12 to 17. But even considering that, I still don’t get the love. The whole plot was obvious, for one thing. It’s a science fiction take on Cinderella, with a female cyborg as the title character, and that should tell you how it’s going to go. Fairytale/SF mashups have been done before, and well; I was a big fan Joan D. Vinge’s Snow Queen series, for example. But Vinge did what Meyer did not, create a solid SF underpinning for her world. Cinder was more like an old-fashioned Sword and Planet action story from the glory days of the pulps. The SF elements were given only the most cursory of explanations, if at all.

On to the story. Cinder is a put-upon cyborg stepdaughter in a future Asian nation that has somehow gone backward and reinstated its emperor. Cyborgs are considered inhuman, and shunned by everyone. Fine, but the book also depicts being a cyborg as pretty cool and transhuman: the heroine has internal interfaces that let her call up information at will, like a mental internet, and she can adjust her own senses and regulate her emotions. She CAN ALSO TELL WHEN PEOPLE ARE LYING. That’s a pretty useful skill! She’s got a metal hand and leg! So why doesn’t wicked stepmother send her out to play poker, or shake people down for cash? Plus, all those useful implants must be pretty expensive. Why are cyborgs considered worthless slaves? Why doesn’t everyone want to be one? Faulty plot logic there.

The setting also made no sense. It wasn’t until the last third of book that I found out this is the time after the “Fourth World War” and nations and cultures have gotten mashed up and amalgamated, with some, for no reason, reverting to monarchies. I couldn’t figure out why a Singapore-like city was being called an Empire and the son of the emperor was just casually walking around, or why the heroine has a Vietnamese surname, but her family no Vietnamese culture. Actually, the whole setting just served as pretty window-dressing like dangling red lanterns in a noodle shop.

And then there’s those royal families and their damn gowns and balls. Why does every other YA book aimed at girls have some variation of this, even the unpublished ones on Wattpad written by actual teens? Was it from the writers growing up on the Disney princess movies and toy lines that have been shoved down young female throats for the past two decades? Granted, the author subverts it by having Cinder show up at that ball in a dirty borrowed gown and not looking her best, but it’s still there serving its purpose for intrigue and romance.

The other major pulpy element was the mysterious Lunar race. These humans have mind-control powers which are given a lame explanation as being based in bioelectricity. Nice try, but brainwaves just don’t work that way, and if they did, that society would be extremely egalitarian, or extremely chaotic, not ruled by a Royal house with queens and princesses and royal dressmakers. There’s no explanation anywhere for why the “Lunarians” developed these powers, or how they can live on an airless, sterile world with no resources and yet be able to raise an army there large enough to threaten the “Earthens.” (I hate this author’s terminology. What’s wrong with the time-worn but worthy Terran?)

Unlike Red Queen, which was infuriating in the same way with its faulty science, but entertaining and readable in a potboiler way, Cinder depicts its elements too carefully and seriously. It lacked the trashy exuberance it could have had.

My Kindle addition also had some glaring errors — a “coy pond” instead of a koi pond, “under-arms” not underarms, and “preoccupied fingers” instead of occupied fingers. At one point Earth is referred to as part of a greater galaxy of human planets, but it’s never mentioned again. As far as I know, in this series the only inhabited planets are Earth and the Moon.

And no, that sexy red high-heeled shoe does not make an appearance in the book.

“Yes, I do heartily repent. I repent I had not done more mischief; and that we did not cut the throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you aren’t hanged as well as we.”

— Anonymous Pirate, asked on the gallows if he repented

“I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you needn’t be hanged like a dog.”

— Anne Bonny to “Calico Jack” Rackham in prison after he had decided
to surrender to pirate hunters instead of fight

“There is none of you but will hang me, I know, whenever you can clinch me within your power.”

— Bartholomew Roberts, explaining to his victims that he was under no obligation to treat them kindly or fairly

Pirates are like onions in cooking, and monsters in AD&D campaigns. There is never such a thing as too many. Here’s a list of generated pirate-type names if you need to add a quick pirate or two to your writing.

Continuing on my theme of randomly-generated magic spells items, let’s look at wizards and magic users in fantasy fiction. There are many memorable characters that come to mind, and if there’s one thing they have in common, it’s an unforgettable name. For example, Gandalf the Gray. Short and to the point; and more importantly, much easier to say and remember than Saruman and White of Radagast the Brown. (When he became Gandalf the White later on, I confess I didn’t like his as much.) Then there’s Jack Vance’s wierdly alliterative Iucounu the Laughing Magician, who was not so mirthful as petty and vengeful. On the other hand J.K. Rowling’s creations Snape and Dumbledore had names suggestive of their personalities, the latter friendly and playful, the former sinister and bitter.

Here’s some magic-user names, reandomly generated, that have a certain ring to them. Need one? Take it!